Digital Technology Of Benefiting And Helping Agriculture To Boost High Yield Of Quality Cotton

Now it is the cotton harvest season, cotton production areas ushered in a large-scale harvest "boom.". The reporter learned from the national cotton trading market of China supply and marketing group that in 2022, thanks to the increase of cotton planting area and the suitable natural climate, the cotton will present a high-yield pattern. The total output is expected to be about 6 million tons, an increase of 2% over the previous year.

Ding Haowu, Secretary of the Party committee and chairman of the national cotton trading market, said that at present, the cotton purchase progress of Xinjiang, the largest cotton production base in China, has reached nearly 40%. Meanwhile, the mechanization process of Xinjiang cotton industry has been accelerated. According to the statistics of Xinjiang cotton processing center in 2024, the cotton production volume of Xinjiang increased from 35% to 1%.

　　 Mechanization promotes "three increases"

Abibula Yasheng, an employee of the 49th regiment of Tumushuke City, the third division of Xinjiang production and Construction Corps, planted 80 mu of cotton this year, and completed the harvest of all cotton fields with cotton picker on October 8. "In the past, we had to rent a car to the county town hundreds of kilometers away to hire cotton pickers, but now the whole process is mechanized." When it comes to cotton planting today, abibla says it's light.

The mechanization level of cotton planting has been rising steadily, and "smart cotton fields" are all over the northern and southern Xinjiang, which promotes the cotton production in Xinjiang to present the "three increase" trend of area increase, total yield increase and unit yield increase.

Zhou run, director of hongxingxiang planting professional cooperative in Beiquan Town, Shihezi general field, Shihezi City, the eighth division of Xinjiang production and Construction Corps, said that this year, due to the adoption of full mechanized planting, field management technology in place, and stable meteorological conditions, the average cotton yield of the cooperative is expected to reach 420 kg per mu, an increase of 13 kg over 2021.

Ding Haowu introduced that since the implementation of cotton target price reform in Xinjiang in 2014, cotton farmers' income has been effectively guaranteed, and with the improvement of mechanization level, Xinjiang cotton industry has made great progress. According to statistics, with the increase of yield per unit area year by year, Xinjiang's cotton output has also increased from 4.149 million tons in 2014 to 5.129 million tons in 2021, accounting for 89% of the country's total from 66% in 2014.

　　 Digital benefit agriculture

With the promotion of data acquisition and platform construction in recent years, cotton has become the most digital agricultural products in China. Shan Xu, the person in charge of the relevant business of the national cotton trading market, said that the "online credit" (Xinjiang cotton cloud loan, cotton easy loan, and cotton agricultural loan) in the national cotton trading market can realize mortgage free, second audit, second loan and second to account, which greatly solves the problem of loan difficulty for cotton farmers in the link of planting.

The digital construction of Xinjiang cotton industry originated from the pilot project of Xinjiang cotton target price reform started in 2014. Shen Jieqiang, deputy general manager of the national cotton trading market, said that at that time, entrusted by the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the national cotton trading market actively participated in the implementation of the system of "professional warehouse supervision + in warehouse notarization and inspection", and the construction and operation and maintenance of the target price reform information platform and Xinjiang cotton market price monitoring platform, which greatly promoted the digitization process of Xinjiang cotton industry.

Through the basic information registration, planting area verification, seed cotton sales statistics, processing information tracking, lint storage supervision, quality and weight in the warehouse notarization inspection, outbound sales flow tracking and other data collection, each package of cotton in Xinjiang has its own "ID card".

"Cotton has become the only agricultural product in China to realize full digital supervision." Shen Jieqiang told reporters that on the basis of Xinjiang cotton target price reform information platform, the national cotton trading market has built a comprehensive service platform for cotton farmers. As of October 2022, nearly 180000 active cotton farmers have been attracted to the platform.

"In the future, the integrated service platform for cotton farmers will also realize the supply and demand docking of agricultural materials, agricultural machinery, agricultural technology, seed cotton acquisition and other resources." It is helpful for Ding Wu to reduce the cost of cotton planting and increase the cost of cotton planting.

　　 Strengthen the cultivation of new cotton varieties

According to the report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, high-quality development is the primary task of building a modern socialist country in an all-round way. For the cotton industry, how to understand the importance of high quality development in the new era and new stage?

Ding Haowu believes that at present, the development level of China's cotton processing, inspection and circulation links is relatively ahead in the world, and the industry front-end needs to be improved.

In terms of varieties, due to the differences of different seed internal indicators, the consistency of lint quality is greatly affected. Therefore, the management of cotton seeds in the international cotton producing countries is very strict. It is generally believed that in the same ecological region, the less cotton varieties the better.

The cotton seed problem has attracted the attention of relevant departments. This year, Xinjiang production and Construction Corps has strengthened the breeding of new cotton varieties on the basis of establishing a long-term mechanism of cotton target price policy. Shihezi city has also promoted the application of cotton recommended varieties traceability system to accurately grasp the application of agricultural and industrial recommended varieties.

From the perspective of scale, Ding Haowu introduced that the planting area of cotton farmers in China ranges from several mu, more than ten Mu to several hundred mu and thousands of mu. Compared with developed countries, the single household area still has a large gap, resulting in high production costs and affecting international competitiveness. On the whole, there is still room for improvement in the scale and intensive development of the industry.

From the perspective of planting mode, cotton ginning plants in China are mostly independent business entities, which need to bear the risk of market fluctuations, which is not conducive to the stability of the industry, but also leads to the decoupling of cotton farmers and the market. In foreign countries, large cotton farmers will set up their own ginning plants or entrust ginning plants to process, and sell lint directly to the market.

Zhou Run's hongxingxiang planting professional cooperative has collected 20000 tons of seed cotton this year, and 60% of the cotton has not yet been sold. Due to the drop in seed cotton prices this year, cotton farmers are still waiting to see the price rise. They have also taken a key step in exploring the disconnection with the market. The cooperative has set up a ginning plant, forming an operation mode of "enterprise + cooperative + farmer" and an integrated industrial chain of "production, processing and sales".

Zhou Run said that in the next step, the cooperative plans to set up a more standardized cotton planting technical team to provide technical support for a larger area of standardized and quality cotton planting.

(source: Economic Daily)